Enjoying the rewards

In my other life, I love paper crafts. I love making mini albums and giving them away. I love scrapbooking and recording stories for my future grandchildren. And best of all...I love shopping for scrapping stuff. so when HSN announced they were going to have 24 hours of scrapping...well HELLO. I was going to be up for the whole event..that started at midnight.

So I started watching at 11pm CST. And when I got tired, I remembered that I can watch from my bed via my Iphone HSN application. So I forced myself to stay up until 2am. Then I had to be up at 4am to get my daughter ready for school and to get prepared for my 5 miler. I really didn't want to do it. And I mean I was so tired that I wasn't even going to make an excuse...I was just going to not do it...who cares?

Well the truth is, it shouldn't matter if my husband cares, my daughter cares or even that you care. (However, it matters to me if all these people do care). But there is something within that forces a person to believe it matters to themselves. And today it mattered to me. I needed to do it for me. I mean, it was my own dang fault that I went to bed so late.

And thank goodness I went. I love that time to myself. And when I reached my halfway point, the sun blessed me with his presence. Hello Sunshine!

The new Nike GPS...it doesn't get any better

Ok, I told you I would be back with more information. I took my Nike GPS out for a test drive and I have to say....I am in love. I don't wear Nike shoes, much less Nike+ shoes and apparently, Nike heard us loud and clear. They could make so much more money if they would just acknowledge not everyone wants to wear Nike but many people want to use Nike+.

I honestly don't know what took so long to get to this point. People like MapMyRun and RunKeeper have been using the GPS technology built into Apple's Iphone for years...so why not them? But in any case, they have produced a GPS Nike+ and it works great.

Now this post is going to be pretty picture heavy. But I want you to see what it involves.

1) When you first open your application, you will see your total miles. My only gripe about this is that you don't see all your accumulative miles from the original Nike +. Which doesn't make sense to me since I use my same log in for Nike GPS.

2) If you choose "Start a new run". You get the above screen and you are able to choose a run by a time, distance or calorie, very similar to Nike +. It has preset goals or you can create a custom one.

3) Why you would only run a complete 5 minutes is beyond me but you can.

4) This screen if very familiar with those who have Nike+. You choose your playlist and location. If you choose outdoors, the GPS will track you. If you choose indoors, the GPS still runs but the accelerometer technology tracks your treadmill runs.

5) Once you finish your run, you can see your route, record how it felt with a smiley icon, the weather, what type of terrain and journal about it. I am not sure how many characters are allowed in the journaling area but I don't plan to write a novel from my IPhone. (See the little quote box on the top right? If you hit that button, you will hear an elite athlete tell you how great you did. I am really loving that feature.

6) But one of the best features is that you can view your run by mileage or pace. You can see where you slowed down or sped up. You can see where you hit your mile markers. Sure there is not much you can do with this visual but it is cool anyway.

The user interface is still the same online is still the same and provides the same information as it did with the original Nike+. You still get motivational congratulations from top athletes. And yep, you guessed it. Your little cartoon can still run on your blog or facebook when you run. You can still set up challenges and earn bragging rights on your facebook page etc.

I guess you could say I am a happy camper or should I say happy runner.

NIke is working...more later

Ok I am so excited to share with you the new app from Nike plus the Nike GPS..OMG!! I have so much to tell you guys but I am at work. Suffice it to say, you can do so much more with this little application. I will post more information when I get off of work...

Still not a morning person

Getting up at 4 am Monday-Friday does not make me a morning person. It makes me a person that has to get up at 4am for my daughter. So, needless to say, this non morning person would like to sleep in on Saturday. But alas, I cannot because that is the day scheduled for my long wog.

In the Texas heat, I have to be out of the house by 5am if I don't want to burn up during my wog. But I want one day of sleeping in until, dare I say 7 am? (You have got to understand that my weekends use to be spent sleeping until 11 am or noon). So this week I came up with a brilliant idea. I am going to switch up my running schedule. Why not make my long wogs during the week? I mean I am up anyway...why not be productive? So I shifted my schedule up two days so that my long wogs are during the week, Saturday is my DOR and Sunday is a short wog. Perfect!!!

I am loving it. Yesterday I did 7 miles in the morning and loved it. I started out so early that I stopped to take pictures, video, did some stretching on the beach (well it has no sand but it is on the shore line) and then I came home. What a wonderful way to start out my day.